Mark Cohen
© Mark Cohen
It is not easy to find much information about Mark Cohen and his work. Mark Cohen is a photographer of immediacy, creating instinctive photographs. It fascinates me how he can capture images with such a close proximity to the subject and create interesting compositions. I guess, given that the images are so instinctive, there is a lot of trial and error in the process, and only some images will work, but when they do it is quite amazing. See the following video as example.
Born in 1943 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, he came to the scene of photography with street photography series in B&W exhibited at the MoMA and a book called “Grim Street“.
Last year Powerhouse Books published ”True Color” and exquisite collection of color images that in my mind are his best work. If you are in the LA area Rose Gallery has now an exhibit of True Color.
© Mark Cohen
The George Eastman House hold a collections of his work, many of them in color [browse through the pages to see them].
The George Eastman House collection holds work by Cohen dating from 1967 to ca. 1978. His fragmented, often harshly lit, and visually chaotic images in both black and white and color are represented, with the color work predominating with 101 prints. Though Cohen’s work is predominately black & white, the Eastman House collection is weighted toward color, from “an experimental deal set up by Bill Jenkins just to see how things would look in color if it were as simple and easy to make color pictures as black and white prints. [So Kodak made the prints.]” (Mark Cohen, 11/2000) Three photographic post cards sent by the photographer to former Eastman House curator Bill Jenkins are housed in the Library’s manuscript collection.
The Museum acquired Cohen’s work through purchase and gifts from the photographer, and other purchases supported with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts from 1971 through 1977. In 1978 Cohen gave the Museum 101 color photographs, the result of a special commission he had from Eastman Kodak Company (as explained above) to create images using Kodak color materials. Also in 1978 more of Cohen’s black and white work was purchased with NEA funds.
© Mark Cohen
[...] always loved Mark Cohen’s photographs, but never really thought about just how he was taking the photos. As it turns out, his style was [...]
[...] Via [EV +/-] [...]
Extraordinary to watch him work. I couldn”t just swoop on people like that without their agreement, it takes some nuts, with a flash too!
The looks on some of the faces of the passers by are priceless and I wonder how often someone lands him a punch? I wouldn”t be so willing to take those kinds of liberties with strangers simply because I would probably resent someone doing it to me.
I love the work but the method comes close to invading privacy. Or perhaps that”s just a modern concern as people have gotten more savvy to how images are used.
I wish my German was up to scratch.
Hey Darryl,
Fully agree with you. My sense is that times have changed, with so many more people taking pictures now, everywhere, I think people are more sensitive to the right of privacy and may not respond that well to methods that are so intrusive.
Best regards,
Miguel
[...] +/-] Exposure Compensation has a wonderful write up on highly acclaimed photographer Mark Cohen. I truly love his work and only wish there were more of his stuff [...]
Here is a video about Mark Cohen made by Penn State University.
http://wpsu.org/ondemand/streams/Mark_Cohen08242.html